Justice Stephen Breyer seemed unsure of his facts last week.
During oral arguments on the constitutionality of health care reform,
he suggested that the law's Medicaid expansion, which will offer
government coverage to about 15 million low-wage workers and their
families, was smaller than previous expansions – notably, the change of
the late 1980s and early 1990s, which brought all poor children under
Medicaid's umbrella; and one enacted in the late 1990s and early 2000s
that included children up to 200 percent of the poverty level.
"The expansion from 0 to 18 or even 0 to 6 . . . it's pretty hard to
argue that they aren't roughly comparable as a percentage of the prior
program or as a percentage of GDP (gross domestic product)," he said to
Paul Clement, the eloquent litigator who represented the 26 states
challenging the Medicaid expansion as unconstitutional coercion of the
states. "If I'm right on those numbers, or even roughly right – I don't
guarantee them – then wouldn't you have to say, well, indeed, Medicaid
has been unconstitutional since 1964?"
http://www.massdevice.com/blogs/massdevice/acas-medicaid-expansion-far-smaller-under-either-bush
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